Belinda McKeon - Solace

Mark stared. ‘You’re telling me to stop working on my thesis?’ he said. At his tone, two women in the queue looked to where he and McCarthy stood. ‘You’re my supervisor, and you’re telling me to jack the fucking thing in?’ He laughed, and the women turned quickly away. McCarthy looked extremely unhappy. As Mark watched him fiddle with the books he was carrying, shifting them under one arm and then back under the other, something else dawned on him. ‘You told Grace not to make any appointments for me, didn’t you?’ he said, bending low to force McCarthy to meet his eye. ‘That’s why she gave me that story about Galway. Am I right?’

‘Mark, as your supervisor I have responsibilities towards you,’ McCarthy said quietly. ‘I knew a meeting with me would be disappointing for you because of what I would have to say to you about your work. I wanted that meeting to happen at the right time. I didn’t want you to be rushed into it. I was hoping you would be able to get a bit of distance from the draft.’

Mark grabbed the handles of the pushchair and jerked it out of the aisle. ‘I won’t bother you again,’ he said to McCarthy. He turned his back and moved on. McCarthy called after him as he went, but he did not follow. As the grey-haired security guard saw Mark approach the exit, he left his booth and, with a smile down at the baby, held open the door.

*

When he answered a call from his father that evening and told him that he would not be coming down that weekend, Mark did not mention his work. He did not want to hear his father’s attempts at conversation about Edgeworth, as though she were someone he often bumped into buying groceries in Keogh’s. Aoife had a bad cold, Mark told him, probably something she had picked up in the swimming-pool, and he did not want to put her through the journey until she was better. Had he taken her to the doctor, his father had wanted to know, and he had said he had. Dr Gorman was as good as they came when it came to getting rid of a cold, his father said, and Mark said he was sure that was true, but Dr Gorman was in Longford, not in Stoneybatter. If he wanted, said his father, he could probably get Aoife an appointment today or tomorrow. He did not want to make the trip with her, Mark said again, and his father said again that it was not even a two-hour journey, and that Aoife could sleep in the car. She was not sleeping, Mark said, and his father said that sounded very serious, and that a second opinion could hardly hurt, and again he said that Dr Gorman was the only doctor he would ever trust with a child who had a cold. That’s because Doctor Gorman was the only doctor he knew, Mark said, and then he said that Aoife was crying, even though she was not, and that he had to go.

‘I’ll be down next weekend,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘I’ll call you again later on,’ his father said, and he did, but Mark did not answer the phone.

*

Clive Robinson’s house was third in a neat red-brick terrace. The path to the front door was narrow and short; four steps did it, and then Mark was looking at the doorbell, and at the brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. He chose the doorbell: it seemed less intrusive — until it rang, sounding like church bells at close range. After a moment, a shadow moved behind the stained glass of the door panel, and came quickly closer. There was the click and scrabble of the latch being turned.

His first thought was that he had known Robinson all this time, and had somehow forgotten it; he must have met him somewhere with Joanne. The familiarity of the face with its grey beard set his mind rifling through the possibilities: had there been a walk through college, a lunchtime sitting on the lawn when this man had stopped to talk to Joanne, when she had introduced him to Mark?

‘Yes?’ said Robinson, in a tone of careful surprise.

‘Hello,’ said Mark, and nodded, though he did not know at what.

‘From the swimming-pool, yes?’ said Robinson, and then Mark remembered where he had seen him before. He almost laughed at the coincidence, until he saw that Robinson was not similarly amused. In fact, he looked frightened.

‘How did you get my address?’ said Robinson. In an attempt to reassure him, Mark held up his hands, but this seemed to further alarm Robinson, who moved to shut the door.

‘I’m Mark Casey,’ Mark blurted loudly, and after a moment, that seemed frozen, he watched the plates of Robinson’s face shift and resettle. ‘Thanks for your card,’ he added, talking too quickly, running the words into each other. ‘The one about Joanne.’

Robinson stared. ‘Come in,’ he said eventually, and gestured, in a dazed sort of way, into the hall. ‘Come in,’ he said again, and as he stepped back, there was a howl and a sudden flash of black at his feet: a cat, bolting away up a staircase now, stopping to survey them both with a resentful glare.

‘Castor,’ Robinson said apologetically. ‘Named by my wife. She liked all that French lot.’

He showed Mark into a small sitting room. Leather armchairs faced a delicately tiled fireplace, and to one side of it, an old writing bureau. The mantelpiece was cluttered with cards for a birthday, two of them homemade by children. Wild flowers stood in a painted clay vase. Where there must once have been double doors, the room gave through to a large kitchen, another cat sleeping in the sunlight on a table piled with papers and books.

‘Please sit,’ said Robinson, and took a newspaper from one of the leather armchairs. ‘There’s coffee, just made,’ he said, ‘and also, of course, tea. Would either interest you?’

‘Coffee would be good,’ Mark said, and he watched as Robinson moved around the kitchen, taking down mugs and pouring in the coffee and the milk.

‘I really should have thought to ask whether you take milk before I put it in,’ he said, as he came back into the smaller room. ‘But, as you’ll no doubt have noticed, it’s something of a surprise to see you. To meet you. Even though, of course, I’m delighted you’ve come.’

Mark nodded. He should say something about the swimming-pool, he thought. He should say that he had never lost his temper like that with Aoife before, that he did not intend to lose it again. That he had never before done something like that to her — whatever it was he had done, shaking her or snapping at her or being rough with her, whatever it was that Robinson had seen, that Robinson had watched.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ he said instead.

‘Not at all,’ Robinson said, lowering himself into the second leather armchair. ‘I’m just so surprised that we’ve met before. Without even realizing.’ He attempted a smile. ‘And your daughter, whom, of course, I had met on an earlier occasion, but, well, babies.’ He shook his head. ‘They change so rapidly.’

‘She’s grown a lot since April,’ Mark said.

‘April?’ Robinson looked confused.

‘You said in your letter that it was April when you bumped into Joanne.’

‘Did I?’ said Robinson, looking no more certain.

‘You said in your letter it was April,’ Mark said again.

‘Well, yes, I suppose it must have been.’

‘You said, too, that you and Joanne had a conversation,’ Mark said, and he took a deep breath before going on. ‘What did you talk about, do you remember?’ This time, while he waited for Robinson to respond, he found himself holding his breath. He sat perfectly still. He did not want to miss a word that Robinson might say about Joanne. He did not want to miss the slightest twitch of expression on his face as he thought about her, as he talked about her. Anything that was about her, that was to do with her, he wanted to see it, he wanted to know it. He wanted to hear about her; he wanted news of her. It did not matter if that news could only be of the past; just for a moment, it would come to him as something new, something living, and he wanted it more than he wanted air.